This undated publicity photo provided by W.W. Norton shows the cover of Cuban-born chef Maricel E. Presilla's cookbook, "Gran Cocina Latina." The James Beard Foundation honored winners in media and publishing in New York on Friday, May 3, 2013. The cookbook of the year honor went to Presilla's massive ode to the food of Latin America, ?Gran Cocina Latina.? (AP Photo/W.W. Norton, File)

Ultimately, she found connections among the cuisines and cultures of the Americas.

"That's the whole point of the book, to show Latin Americans that we are one," said Presilla, author of "Gran Cocina Latina." "This whole idea of balkanization, disintegration and disaggregation is not for us. Although we are very different and happy to be distinct, we do have a common grammar in our cuisine; there is a common DNA."

Her book draws upon more than 30 years of travels throughout Latin America documenting recipes and cooking techniques. Her 900-page volume has the breadth and depth of a reference book but with a personal voice in which Presilla recounts travels, childhood memories of her native Cuba and her formidable research.

More Information

'Gran Cocina Latina'

By Maricel Presilla

W.W. Norton,

912 pp., $45

The chapters of her book focus on specific ingredients, dishes or styles, such as rice, condiments, empanadas, tamales, cebiches (as she spells them), soups, meat and poultry. She dissects mole in her chapter on "hot pepper pots," which also includes adobos, pepianes (or pipianes) and the Peruvian stews called secos.

Though it's possible to find definitive versions of Peruvian lomo saltado, Cuban ropa vieja, Argentinean and Chilean empanadas and a Brazilian feijoada, to name a few, those well-known favorites are barely a start.

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Perhaps it's only natural that Presilla, who has a doctorate in medieval Spanish history, would have produced a work of such depth, which won best general cookbook from the International Association of Culinary Professionals and was a finalist for best international cookbook from the James Beard Foundation. All this, a year after she won a Beard award as Best Chef Mid-Atlantic.

Before she became a chef, Presilla taught medieval history at New York University and Rutgers. Her academic training helped her see how medieval Spain - the culture of the conquistadores who came to the New World beginning with Christopher Columbus in 1492 - ties together the cuisines of the Americas.

The result was a fusion of native foods with a cuisine that was itself a fusion of Islamic, Roman and Jewish influences. And from that, a hemisphere of cultures and cuisines arose.

"Cooking techniques and flavors, in essence, are almost archaic, and they remain … in Latin America, where in Spain they were lost," she said, explaining that many medieval techniques such as mojos and adobos are strong in the New World while in Spain they largely died out.

In many areas, the painful births of new cultures began with intermixing, such as intermarriage between Spanish soldiers with indigenous royalty, and the taking of concubines.

In colonial strongholds, nuns set up convents and schools, using African and native women to help in the kitchen.

Meanwhile, native fruits and vegetables replace those from Spain.

"So immediately this process of creolization, where there is acceptance and also replacement, some things from the Old World replaced some important items," she said. "And then you get into these hybrid societies, where the food is hybrid, and this is who we are. This is how we eat to this day."